


i'd take one step forward, end up two steps back

by r1ker



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 19:31:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6252604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r1ker/pseuds/r1ker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>title from somebody like you</p><p>i took my own liberties with mick's storyline and thus came this</p>
    </blockquote>





	i'd take one step forward, end up two steps back

**Author's Note:**

> title from somebody like you
> 
> i took my own liberties with mick's storyline and thus came this

Ray hears about Mick and his mind instantly goes to Leonard.

 

Not _well, did Mick die_ or _is he coming back_ but _oh God, what's Leonard going to say about this?_ He's almost sick with worry by the time they tell him Mick will no longer be one of their concerns, that he died at Leonard's hands once finding out he was part of a package deal. Ray's almost ill with how there was no choice in having Leonard do away with him. He can't believe that was even an option, to let someone who'd practically grown up with their best friend end his life when he posed a threat to a collective the two of them had barely been a part of for a few weeks.

 

Everyone else on the waverider stays away from Leonard. They've known for a while he'd been close to boiling over for a while but now, with one half of the duo gone, the other half was closer to exploding than ever before. After he'd gotten back Leonard went right to the room that once belonged to both he and Mick, and the door had shut far too fast for Ray to put his foot into it. There hadn't even been any opening to get out and join the rest of the crew for dinner and breakfast the following morning.

 

Ray figures then, after the dining hall's gone quiet and the plates have been done away with, that it's time to end this. He grabs his coat from the bench he was previously sitting on and starts his way down the hall to the block of rooms. Once he gets to Leonard's he pauses, lets his knuckles hover above the door before knocking once, twice. There's a second or two that pass before Leonard opens the door, only to begin shutting it even as Ray's hand holds onto the doorway.

 

"Don't," he calls out just as the door threatens to come into contact with his hand. Leonard stops, pulls it back open to where only the left side of his face is visible. Ray can see from just that small glimpse that something's wrong. Leonard doesn't speak, doesn't offer anything that could be perceived as rude, and Ray's all the more thrown off by that last part than the quiet. "If you'd let me in I could probably help you get to the bottom of this."

 

Leonard shakes his head and his defiance is coupled with the lack of explanation, all the more frustrating to Ray. He can't take people beating themselves up, let alone Leonard doing it, so if it takes pulling teeth he doesn't mind resorting to it. But something in him gives and soon the door is again let back to let Ray slip through the crack that forms.

 

In the room it's surprisingly tidy, bed looking like it's had a nearly-there attempt to be made, and clothes from days past in their rightful place in a bin in the corner. Mick's bunk looks like it hasn't been touched once Ray lets his eyes go up to the top bed. Even the sheets are balled up at the foot of the bed from the last morning he had spent aboard the waverider. He can see Leonard looking at it too, regarding it with a veil of anger not twisted to conceal the slight loneliness it holds.

 

"You're not mad anymore about it," Ray comments matter-of-factly, and for the most part, he's right. Leonard's so tired of being angry that he's resigned himself to this whole thing. The first night it had the potential to be downright terrible, the overwhelming silence having taken its place in their room instead of Mick's snoring and breathing. Leonard almost got up to open the air vent near the floor to let the roar of the furnace break the quiet but soon the indecisiveness lulled him off to sleep. There he was met with uneasy rest, still seeing Mick over and over in a perverse and reoccurring loop he couldn't seem to shake.

 

"It's so quiet in here without him and you don't know what it's like to live without that," Ray continues out loud as if he's mindful of what he's saying. At this point he's practically pontificating like he can perceive what it's like to lose a best friend. He's always had friends, knew of people he was sure would have his back in the same sort of way, but never ones so close as Leonard was with Mick. Any pain he can sense he's putting it in the perspective of the action duo movies he watched as a kid. Which is not very well, shallow without meaning to be simply out of a lack of understanding.

 

He hates that he can't be more helpful. In fact, he's hated that a lot about himself over the past couple of weeks, but more so regarding someone in his team.

 

"You knew him before you came to help us." Leonard nods his head almost forcefully at Ray's stating of a well-known fact, impatient to see the point Ray hopefully will come to soon. He'd known Mick for so long, thought he'd never get close to that big hulking kid who came and cornered him away from bullies in juvie.

 

Now he's kicking himself for getting closer than someone like him has the right to be. "You knew him long enough to get close. And I don't think I can imagine how badly that hurts, to have to put down the one person who understood you from the get-go in the name of people you've known not nearly as long. I don't think any of us have been able to get that. That might be part of the reason why I'm the first person to actually say something instead of avoiding you like the plague afraid you won't consider us as concerned."

 

Ray shakes his head once, still imperceptible to the partnership those two men retained for so long. "I won't ever understand all Mick did for you, because I never had that. What I do know is he was your friend, and he loved you no matter what those pirates led him to believe. And I'm so sorry."

 

After that Leonard can't see Ray as clearly anymore. His eyes burn, rest of his face joining them in a similar ache, and his vision blurs at the corners with angry tears. His teeth set together so stiffly he's vaguely curious as to how they haven't snapped under the pressure. For a second he finds a demand for Ray to get the hell out on the tip of his tongue. But for now he crumbles only at the edges in that he lets his head fall far enough to have Ray striding to him slowly in response.

 

The way Leonard tenses up automatically at touch rears its head when Ray wraps his arms loosely around Leonard's shoulders. But then again Ray soon starts to feel like a person made for hugging, giving in all the right places to soon have Leonard allowing a hand to the back of his head, the other an arm around the top of his shoulders. He sighs and his head falls down to where Ray's collarbone edges out sharp from the collar of his soft shirt.

 

Leonard can smell perhaps much more than he bargained for, bar soap they all have to use for being aboard an underprepared ship, notes of a cologne Leonard would never have thought Ray would have had the appreciation for. What he can see of Ray's skin is dotted with freckles when he opens eyes he never knew he closed. Ray is warm, he's not bringing forth any past transgressions like others might do when given an opportunity to air them, and most importantly he's _there_.

 

In another point in time he'd kick himself for seeking some sort of comfort in someone like Ray. When the last person who gave him some semblance of peace was frozen at his own hand, he'll take any sort of calm he can get. And that brand of calm says to him, somewhere just over his head where his chin has found the side of Leonard's head, "I'm sorry." And Leonard knows he has no right to be, for nothing is his fault, but he understands. He nods, and he holds on.


End file.
